“Google has filed a brief at a federal court in Florida defending the file-hosting site Hotfile in its case against the MPAA. The search giant accuses the movie companies of misleading the court and argues that Hotfile is protected under the DMCA’s safe harbor. Indirectly, Google is also refuting claims being made by the US government in the criminal case against Megaupload.

“In their brief, Google points out that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Wikipedia are able to thrive because they are protected by the DMCA. But, if the MPAA has its way, these and other services will be in serious trouble.

“Without the protections afforded by the safe harbors, those services might have been forced to fundamentally alter their operations or might never have launched in the first place,” Google writes in the brief.

“The MPAA has argued that Hotfile has no right to exist because it’s used predominantly for copyright-infringing purposes. Google replies to this by arguing that it’s irrelevant how many infringements there are. Under the DMCA it would only be problematic if Hotfile is aware of each and every individual pirated file on its systems.”